This tutorial is to help you with Kawaks, an excellent arcade game
emulator for Capcom and NeoGeo games. When it comes to emulation of Capcom and NeoGeo games, the emulation enthusiast prefers Kawaks. Versus Mame32 it offers much more features.

I suggest you make a new folder called "Arcade" within a folder called "Emulation". You don't have to, but it makes things a little easier for you if you're not too computer literate. Extract all the contents of this emulator's zip file into the
Arcade folder. If you don't know how to extract files from a zip file then read this. Put all of your
arcade ROMs into the "roms" folder. Double-click on "kawaks" to open it.

• Never extract the contents of an arcade ROM zip file because arcade emulators run off of the zip file itself.

• Never rename an arcade zip file because its exact abbreviated name is how arcade emulators can detect it.

• You must familiarize yourself with the arcade emulation system or else you'll get confused very easily. Click on the File menu then Load Game. You will arrive at the screen displayed to the right of here (click it to enlarge). Here you see a loooong list of games. These are all the games that Kawaks supports. But why is each game listed several times? Ah, why indeed. Scroll down to "Dungeons & Dragons" and I'll tell you.

Each game is listed several times because those are different versions of the game(s), and Kawaks supports them all. Ah, but there's more to it. The game at the top of each list is the
parent (which I highlighted in aqua blue for you). In this case, the Euro version is the
parent for both of the Dungeons & Dragons games. All the other versions (US, Japan, Asia) will not work without the Euro version. So if you really want to play the US, Japan, or Asia version, the Euro version *must* be downloaded. However if you're American you don't *have* to download the US version, because the Euro version is in perfect English. This applies to every other Euro game besides D&D.

NeoGeo games will not load until you download the NeoGeo BIOS, which is 'neogeo.zip'. You can download it right here (931 KB). Simply place it in the roms folder. Do not extract its contents, just place the zip file in the folder.

If for whatever reason you're using an older version of Kawaks, you may require the older NeoGeo BIOS, which you can download right here (341 KB). Rename it to 'neogeo.zip' for it to work.

1. FIRST you must have all of your arcade ROMs in the "roms" folder within the Kawaks folder

2. Open Kawaks. Click on the File menu then Load Game.

3. Click on Only Available.

4. Your arcade ROMs should appear listed. Double-click on the one you want to play.

*Important Note: When you put new ROMs into the "roms" folder, you must click on Scan for new so that Kawaks adds it to the list. If Kawaks doesn't add it then that ROM probably isn't compatible with it.

• Double-check to make sure your arcade ROMs are indeed in the "roms" folder.

• Did you accidentally rename the game? If you did, look in the main game list for its proper name, or just re-download it.

• Did you scan for new games? Click on Scan for new in the Load Game screen to do so.

• If the above didn't work, try Rescan all then.

• If you did the above and Kawaks still doesn't detect your games, then you probably downloaded an older dump of the game. The only thing you can do is download the game from other sites, and cross your fingers and hope it's the newer dump. I talk a little more about this
here.

When it comes to keyboard/gamepad
configurations, Kawaks does something different than other emulators.
Every time you play a game for the first time you need to reconfigure
your keyboard (or gamepad) to your preferred settings. They did this so
that every game can have a custom input configuration. It's annoying for
people (like me) who just prefer for every game to have the same button
configuration. Anyway, so to reconfigure the keys you need to:

3. You'll arrive here. By default Kawaks is already in "define all keys" mode. You'll see that the highlighting is on "Up". Press the keyboard key or gamepad button you want for Up. The highlighting when then jump to "Down". Continue the process to set up the key you want for each button.
*If you have a gamepad, it would be a good idea to set your spare
buttons to to "Player 1 Coin" and "Player 1 Start".

2. Here you'll see a wide selection of wonderful screen renders. Simply click on the one you desire. Several of the renders look exactly the same, not sure why some are even there. I say just stick with good 'ol "2xSai". Below are thumbnails of most of the better renders.

• Normal: no renders enabled; the default.

• Alternate scanlines: basic scanlines.

Software Zoom 2x...

• Plain: zoomed in two times.

• With scanlines: 2x zoom with basic scanlines.

• With 50% scanlines: 2x zoom with 50% scanlines.

Kreed Blitters...

• 2xSai: smears pixels together with a slight blur, and does so diagonally in attempt to round every edge.

• Super 2xSai: combines 2xSai and Eagle.

• Super Eagle: same as 2xSai but the screen is less blurred and not all the edges are rounded off.

You can enter full screen mode by pressing Alt+Enter. Press it again or press the Esc key to go back to window mode.
• Ah, but entering full screen for the first time, you see that it's so tiny and weird lookin. How do you blow it up? Simple! Just enable stretch to full screen. You'll find it by going to Video
> Correct full screen ratio > Stretch to full screen

By default transparency is disabled. You can enable it by going to the Video
menu, then Transparencies. Although if you have a not-so-fast computer, I wouldn't recommend enabling transparency. Not all games have transparency. I suppose games from the mid 90's and above usually have it. I know Dungeons & Dragons has it.

• What's transparency? Transparency
are graphics that are see-through; graphics with opacity/alpha. For
example, in Dungeons & Dragons the spells have transparency, like,
through bolts of lightning you can still see the background behind them.

Yeah, arcade emulation is a tad bit different than playing SNES or Genesis. There's two buttons to keep in mind: Player 1 Coin and Player 1 Start. As you see in the button configuration window, "F3" is Player 1 Coin and "F1" is Player 1 Start. Once a game is loaded press Player 1 Coin as many times as your heart desires. It doesn't matter if you press it 1 time or 100 times. This enters virtual coins into Kawaks (a la an arcade machine). That also means you can toss in coins whenever you want, so it doesn't matter to toss all of them in before you start the game. Anyway, once you've finished inserting your coins, go ahead and press "F1" for Player 1 Start. The game will now begin. Remember,
you can changePlayer 1 Coin and Player 1 Start to different keyboard keys if you'd like, or even gamepad buttons.

More than one thing could be causing this:
• You do have all of your arcade ROMs in the "roms" folder, right? Make sure of that first. =P
• Are you trying to play the orphan of a game? If so, you need to download the parent of it in order for it to work. Go here to learn more about parents and orphans.
• Are you trying to play a NeoGeo game? Make sure you have the NeoGeo BIOS.
• If you're ok on the two above possibilities, then that means your arcade
ROM is an older dump. Unfortunately, the Kawaks programmers (as well as other arcade emulator authors) are purists who insist on everything to be perfect. Once someone dumps an arcade game 'better', the Kawaks authors update the code to support the newer dump, rendering the older dump incompatible. Hence you get the missing files errors. You're not really missing files, that's just another way of saying your arcade
ROM is
old. The only way to resolve this is to download the arcade ROM from other arcade
ROM sites, and cross your fingers and hope it's the newer dump. Yeah, this sucks. >_< But it's something we all have to live with.